Abstract
Fraternities and sororities are popular organizations within university life. Even though their activities are usually secretive and protected, social media offer a chance for the public to understand these groups. In the present study, we investigated how sexualization is communicated on fraternities’ location pages on Instagram. Applying a multi-dimensional coding scheme composed of 12 sexualization variables, we analyzed 600 Greek life posts from 49 fraternities. Among the posts, we found (a) body shots, (b) revealing clothing, (c) sexualized mouths, and (d) breasts/chests to be the most frequently used sexualization cues. In addition, there was a positive association between the number of sexualization cues in a post and the number of likes the post received. The results also point to gender differences: fraternity posts portraying only women included a greater number of sexualization cues, on average, than posts showing only men or mixed genders. Also, gender of individuals in the pictures moderated the relationships between sexualized mouths/buttocks and likes. Implications for gender inequality and risks of sexualization are discussed.
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Data Availability
Data are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Code Availability
The codebook is available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Notes
There was a moderate-to-strong positive association between sexualized breasts/chests and abdomens, χ2 (1, n = 588) = 102.17, Cramer V = 0.42, p < .001. Therefore, we did not enter abdomens into the regression model to avoid multicollinearity.
We did not record Instagram users’ follower counts when collecting data in November and December 2019. Based on a reviewer’s suggestion, we recorded Instagram users’ follower counts in August 2021 and conducted post hoc analyses for H2-3 controlling for follower counts. H2 was supported; results of the partial Spearman’s correlation suggested a positive correlation between the number of sexualization cues in a post and the number of likes the post received, controlling for follower count, rs(499) = .16, p < .001. For H3, after controlling for standardized follower count, all inferences remained the same, except for the interaction effect of mixed-gender (men as reference) and buttocks on likes. The differences of showing sexualized buttocks between mixed-gender and men-only photos in receiving likes became nonsignificant, IRR = 1.88, p = .097. Because the counts could have changed between when we initially coded the sample and when we recorded the follower counts, we regard these post-hoc analyses as tentative.
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Yan, K., Salmon, J. & Aubrey, J.S. A Sexy Post a Day Brings the “Likes” Your Way: A Content Analytic Investigation of Sexualization in Fraternity Instagram Posts. Sexuality & Culture 26, 685–706 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-021-09915-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-021-09915-9